The Big Picture
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Rick Warren’s bestselling book The Purpose- Driven Life opens with a sim-
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ple admonition: “It’s not about you.” It might come as a surprise that a book
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so many people have turned to for comfort and advice begins on such a
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down note. But Warren’s strategy is to appeal precisely to people’s sense of
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being overwhelmed at life’s challenges. He offers them a direct way out: it’s
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not about you; it’s about God.
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You don’t have to accept Warren’s theology to sympathize with the im-
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pulse. There are many ways it could be about something other than us: we
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could be spiritually inclined without belonging to a traditional organized
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religion, or we could feel devoted to a culture or nation or family, or we
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could believe in objective forms of meaning based on scientific grounds.
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Any such strategy can be both challenging, in the sense that it can be hard
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to live up to the standards that are imposed on you, but also comforting,
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because at least there are standards, darn it.
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Poetic naturalism offers no such escape from the demands of meeting
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life in a creative and individual way. It is about you: it’s up to you, me, and 24
every other person to create meaning and purpose for ourselves. This can
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be a scary prospect, not to mention exhausting. We can decide that what we
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want is to devote ourselves to something larger— but that decision comes
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from us.
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The ascendance of naturalism has removed the starting point for much
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of how we used to conceive of our place in the universe. We’re Wile E. Coy-
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ote, and we’ve just looked down. We need some new ground to stand on—
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or we need to learn how to fly.
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There are two legitimate worries about the idea that we construct meaning
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for our lives.
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The first worry is that it’s cheating. Maybe we are fooling ourselves if we
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think we can find fulfillment once we accept that we are part of the physical
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world, patterns of elementary particles beholden to the laws of physics.
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Sure, you can say you are leading a rich and rewarding life based on your
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love for your family and friends, your dedication to your craft, and your
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work to make the world a better place. But are you really? If the value we
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place in such things isn’t objectively determined, and if you won’t be around
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to witness any of it in a hundred years or so, how can you say your life truly
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matters?
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This is just grumpiness talking. Say you love somebody, genuinely and
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fiercely. And let’s say you also believe in a higher spiritual power, and think
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of your love as a manifestation of that greater spiritual force. But you’re also
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an honest Bayesian, willing to update your credences in light of the evi-
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dence. Somehow, over the course of time, you accumulate a decisive amount
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of new information that shifts your planet of belief from spiritual to natu-
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ralist. You’ve lost what you thought was the source of your love— do you
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lose the love itself? Are you now obligated to think that the love you felt is
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now somehow illegitimate?
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No. Your love is still there, as pure and true as ever. How you would
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explain your feelings in terms of an underlying ontological vocabulary has
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changed, but you’re still in love. Water doesn’t stop being wet when you
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learn it’s a compound of hydrogen and oxygen.
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The same goes for purpose, meaning, and our sense of right and wrong.
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If you are moved to help those less fortunate than you, it doesn’t matter
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whether you are motivated by a belief that it’s God’s will, or by a personal
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conviction that it’s the right thing to do. Your values are no less real ei-
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ther way.
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The second worry about creating meaning within ourselves is that there
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isn’t any place to start. If neither God nor the universe is going to help us
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attach significance to our actions, the whole project seems suspiciously ar-
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bitrary.
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But we do have a starting place: who we are. As living, thinking organ-
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isms, we are creatures of motion and motivation. At a basic, biological level,
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we are defined not by the atoms that make us up but by the dynamic pat-
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terns we trace out as we move through the world. The most important thing
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about life is that it occurs out of equilibrium, driven by the second law. To
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stay alive, we have to continually move, process information, and interact
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with our environment.
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In human terms, the dynamic nature of life manifests itself as desire.
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There is always something we want, even if what we want is to break free of
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the bonds of desire. That’s not a sustainable goal; to stay alive, we have to
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eat, drink, breathe, metabolize, and generally continue to ride the wave of
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increasing entropy.
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Desire has a bad reputation in certain circles, but that’s a bum rap. Cu-
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riosity is a form of desire; so are helpfulness and artistic drive. Desire is an
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aspect of caring: about ourselves, about other people, about what happens
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to the world.
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People are not inanimate rocks, accepting what goes on around them
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with serene indifference. Different people might exhibit different levels of
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care, and they might care in different ways, but caring itself is ubiquitous.
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They might care in an admirable way, watching out for the well- being of
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others, or their caring might be purely selfish, guarding their own interests.
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But people are inescapably characterized by what they care about: their en-
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thusiasms, inclinations, passions, hopes.
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When our lives are in good shape, and we are enjoying health and lei-
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sure, what do we do? We play. Once the basic requirements of food and
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shelter have been met, we immediately invent games and puzzles and com-
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petitions. That’s a lighthearted and fun manifestation of a deeper impulse:
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we enjoy challenging ourselves, accomplishing things, having something to
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show for our lives.
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That makes sense, in light of evolution. An organism that didn’t give a
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crap about anything that happened to it would be at a severe disadvantage
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in the struggle for survival when compared to one that looked out for itself,
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its family, and its compatriots. We are built from the start to care about the
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world, to make it matter.
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Our evolutionary heritage isn’t the whole story. The emergence of con-
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sciousness means that what we care about, and how we behave in response
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to those impulses, can change over time as a result of our learning, our in-
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teraction with others, and our own self- reflection. Our instincts and unre-
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flective desires aren’t all we have; they’re just a starting point for building
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something significant.
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Human beings are not blank slates at birth, and our slates become in-
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creasingly rich and multidimensional as we grow and learn. We are bub-
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bling cauldrons of preferences, wants, sentiments, aspirations, likes,
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feelings, attitudes, predilections, values, and devotions. We aren’t slaves to
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our desires; we have the capacity to reflect on them and strive to change
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them. But they make us who we are. It is from these inclinations within
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ourselves that we are able to construct purpose and meaning for our lives.
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The world, and what happens in the world, matters. Why? Because it
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matters to me. And to you.
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The personal desires and cares that we start with may be simple and self-
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regarding. But we can build on them to create values that look beyond our-
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selves, to the wider world. It’s our choice, and the choice we make can be to
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expand our horizons, to find meaning in something larger than ourselves.
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The movie It’s a Wonderful Life has unmistakable religious
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underpinnings— it’s Christmas Eve, and George Bailey is saved from kill-
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ing himself by the intervention of a guardian angel. But as author Chris
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Johnson has pointed out, what changes George’s mind isn’t words of angelic
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wisdom; it’s the demonstration that his life had a tangible, positive effect
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on the lives of other people in the town of Bedford Falls. Real stuff, here on
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Earth, the lives we actually lead. In the end, that’s the only place meaning
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can possibly reside.
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The construction of meaning is a fundamentally individual, subjective,
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creative enterprise, and an intimidating responsibility. As Carl Sagan put
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it, “We are star stuff, which has taken its destiny into its own hands.”
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The finitude of life lends poignancy to our situations. Each of us will
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have a last word we say, a last book we read, a last time we fall in love. At
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each moment, who we are and how we behave is a choice that we individu-
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ally make. The challenges are real; the opportunities are incredible.
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What Is and What Ought to Be
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david Hume, the eighteenth- century Scottish thinker whom we’ve
encountered before as a forefather of poetic naturalism, is widely
regarded as a central figure of the Enlightenment. When he was
only twenty- three years old, he began work on a book that would turn out
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to be extraordinarily influential, A Treatise of Human Nature. At least, it
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would be judged so by history; at the time, Hume’s ambition to write a
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bestseller fell somewhat short, as he lamented that the book “fell dead- born
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from the press.”
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We should give Hume credit for trying to be a lively writer, even if the
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reading public didn’t necessarily agree. In one famous passage, he sardoni-
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cally remarks on what he sees as a curious tendency among his fellow phi-
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losophers: a predilection for suddenly declaiming what ought to be true
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when they had previously been describing only what is true.
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In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with,
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I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time
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in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a
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God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of
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a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copula-
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tions of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition
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that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change
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is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as
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this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or
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W h At I S A n d W h A t Ou g h t t O b E
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David Hume. (Painting by Allan Ramsay)
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affirmation, ’tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and
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explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given,
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for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation
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can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different
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from it.
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While it’s amusing to think of propositions copulating with each other,
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Hume’s sentences admittedly do go on a bit. But his main point is clear:
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talking about “oughts” is an entirely different kind of thing from simply
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talking about what “is.” The former is passing a judgment, saying what
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should be the case; the latter is merely descriptive, saying what actually hap-
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pens. If you’re going to perform such a magic trick and call it philosophy,
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you should at least have the consideration to tell us how the trick is done.
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Modern thought has distilled the point down to a maxim: “You can’t derive
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ought from is.”
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There is an apparent problem here for naturalism: if you can’t derive
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ought from is, then you’re in trouble, because “is” is all there is. There isn’t
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anything outside the natural world to which we can turn for guidance
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about how to behave. The temptation to somehow extract such guidance
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from the natural world itself is incredibly strong.
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But it doesn’t work. The natural world doesn’t pass judgment; it doesn’t
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provide guidance; it doesn’t know or care about what ought to happen. We
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are allowed to pass judgment ourselves, and we’re part of the natural world,
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but different people are going to end up with different judgments. So be it.
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To see why it’s impossible to derive ought from is, it’s useful to think about
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how we can ever derive anything from anything else. There are many such
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ways, but let’s focus in on one of the simplest: the logical syl ogism, paradigm 13
of deductive reasoning. Syllogisms look like this:
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1. Socrates is a living creature.
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2. All living creatures obey the laws of physics.
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3. Therefore, Socrates obeys the laws of physics.
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This is just one example of the general form, which can be expressed as:
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1. X is true.
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2. If X is true, then Y is true.
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3. Therefore, Y is true.